1.Perseverance: We all face challenges. The average American will change jobs 8-9 times in their career. The true measure of a person’s worth is defined by their ability to overcome adversity.

“There is no education like adversity.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

2. Natural curiosity: the pursuit of lifelong learning is a critical attribute when times change with the degree of rapidity we are experiencing in today’s turbulent world. You should always be looking to increase your skills by pursuing accreditations and certifications, learning a new software program or another language. Curiosity manifests itself in being a voracious reader, and in general having a natural curiosity towards the way things work, and how people operate (being a closet sociologist.)

3. Playing politics: understanding how to navigate the turbulent waters of today’s workplace is critical for long-term survival and success. We’ve all heard ad nauseum that very little of our success can be contributed to the actual work. It’s how we play the “game” that matters. Even if you hate doing that, it is important your learn how to do it well.

4. Embrace change: adaptability is a key for success. Entire industries like banking and financial services, printing, publishing, retail and advertising are imploding.

5. Having a moral compass: it is especially critical for small business owners to realize that their personal values and belief system are synonymous with their organization culture. Being able to match your personal values to an organization’s is the most critical factor in ensuring one’s job satisfaction. An entire emerging industry is growing around the ideal of promoting the social good. In the age of Enron, Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and BP, what you represent is fast becoming more relevant than the products or services you offer.

6. Social extrovert: being liked goes a very long way towards building broad social and professional networks. Do people gravitate towards you or literally run from you?

7. Established personal brand: have you asked yourself: “what do I really stand for?” What is your unique selling proposition? What are the three or four key characteristics that most clearly define who you are and what you hope to accomplish?

8. Lean into discomfort: There are things we are mortified of doing, like public speaking for example. Being able overcome our fears is an absolute must, in order to ensure success in today’s global contract workplace. Research indicates that as many as 25% of all American workers are now classified as independent / contract / consulting. With jobs becoming more difficult to find/keep, people will be forced into opportunities that require them to go at it alone.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
– Dale Carnegie

And Why You Can’t Seem to Fix It.

In today’s challenging business climate, it is hard enough to maintain and even grow your business. But there are five areas that you have complete control over, which you are probably failing at. Following are the top five reasons that most organizations are stuck, and likely can’t get themselves out of the current economic calamity.

5. Your personal problem-solving skills are outdated: You are attempting to navigate your way out of this business climate using the same old approaches that worked before but won’y any longer. We live in unchartered times. The challenges we face are unique, and can’t be solved with yesterday’s solutions. It’s not enough to lower prices, fix operations, or lay off staff. In a climate in which our business, political, educational, and financial institutions are all broken we simply CAN’T continue to pursue business-as-usual approaches.

4. You haven’t aligned your core business functions: Face it, you do not develop your sales, marketing, product development and customer care efforts in isolation of one another. Your management team continues to treat these as stand-alone, separate entities when in fact they are all intertwined and need to be planned and budgeted for as a single entity.

3. Your strategy is no longer relevant: You continue to implement a strategy that was developed at an earlier time before circumstances changed so drastically. Marketplace conditions such as the rate of technological change and globalization of business & industry are changing at such a rapid pace that strategies cannot be applied beyond 3 to 4 month cycles in most industries.

2. You don’t know your customers: You continue to sell to your existing customers without truly understanding the challenges they face. When was the last time you took a top revenue client out for breakfast? Do you periodically join your top clients for a ride along, to shadow them for a day to learn their business and challenges they face? Have you conducted a lifetime value assessment to determine your most (and least) profitable accounts? Do you have a strategy to grow repeat business with existing clients and covert your repeat customers into apostles?

…and the #1 reason you can’t “unstick”your business in these turbulent times:

1. You treat your employees like “disposable assets”: Instead of elevating your people to their rightful place as your organization’s most valuable asset, you treat them like a commodity. You conduct periodic layoffs, and expect their loyalty to remain steadfast. Have passionate are you about constantly soliciting feedback from your people on how to improve your organization. Do you provide them with the autonomy, training and resources to make decisions independently? Do you have an idea generation program?

Do you reward and recognize your people? Coach and mentor them? Have you performed a human capital audit to match every one of your people’s core competencies with their job responsibilities? Do you constantly challenge your people? What about providing a great workplace? How often do you provide feedback? Do you have a 360-degree performance review program?

Until you unleash the tremendous untapped potential of your workforce, you will not be able to compete in today’s changing global business climate.

If you listen to the pundits talk about a supposed American “recovery” then no doubt you are aware that we have come out of this two year Recession. The experts point to a stock market that has rebounded, and an increase in the demand for certain goods. Supposedly the manufacturing sector has turned some sort of a corner, and some companies have even begun hiring again.

So, is it safe to safe we are coming out of the Recession?

What if we have not been experiencing a Recession at all, but something fundamentally and significantly different (and by different I mean…WORSE?)
When our unofficial unemployment rate remains stubbornly fixed between 15-20% and experienced professionals cannot find work after six+ months of aggressive searching, we have problems. When entire industries have imploded (banking, financial services, housing, printing, publishing, retail, advertising, and manufacturing) and we have outsourced all the business operations we used to excel at, there is something larger at play that is not being discussed!

What if we are at a societal crossroads where our educational, business, and political systems are no longer serving the needs of the average American? For example, students that at one time would not hesitate to consider college are now NOT considering college as a viable option due to the $200,000 price tag and no guarantee of post-graduation employment.

The average American student falls farther behind the rest of the industrialized world in science and mathematics proficiency. We live in the contract employee era. One in four Americans can now be classified as independent/contract workers and that number continues to spike upwards. People in their thirties to fifties cannot find work.

Are we really in store for better days ahead?

Small businesses used to be the lifeblood of any job-based economic recovery. 95% of all new jobs were created by employers with 500 or fewer employers. In today’s business climate, small businesses cannot afford to hire new workers and are going out of business at record levels.

Only now has the Obama Administration made a concerted effort to help save the American small business from going extinct. Our global banks and financial institutions continue to receive record bailouts. Apparently you can be too big to fail, but the guarantee of support from our Government does not apply to our small business owners.

Our two-party political system seems unable to come together to save our Gulf Coast from British Petroleum, or save our states from bankruptcy. The American Middle Class continues to erode and a greater percent of the American wealth pie gets concentrated in an ever shrinking upper class.

Are we witnessing a transfer of power from America to India and China, or are better days ahead in the form of a Great American recovery?